


This Heartfelt Leap (I Surrender)

by featherx



Series: FE3H + PJO AUs [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Percy Jackson Fusion, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/My Unit | Byleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24664531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherx/pseuds/featherx
Summary: Linhardt clamps his hands over his ears with a scowl. “Why would you wake me up to this?”Caspar just grins. There’s a cut above his left eyebrow and what looks like a bruise beginning to form on his cheek, and Linhardt sighs—he knew he shouldn’t have left Caspar alone in the training grounds with Felix earlier. “Come on! Didn’t you hear the part about the three-legged death race?”“The three-legged—” Linhardt sits up. “I’m sorry. What?”
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Series: FE3H + PJO AUs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785013
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	This Heartfelt Leap (I Surrender)

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: casphardt PJO AU in the three-legged death race!  
> oh man this was a LOT of fun to write and i think you can tell LOL. thanks so much for requesting!! ❤  
> title from [first of summer by the ransom collective](https://open.spotify.com/track/2CRsI5puJAqlVBe1W0AdWq?si=525bergNS_-hG35O1g_qYw)
> 
> this takes place in the same universe as my other PJO fic with oracle!mbyleth, but it isn't that important aside from a few mentions

Today, Hypnos is as formless as ever. Linhardt stares at him, at the outline of his father he can just barely make out in the fog of his dreams, but all he can really see are a pair of small wings sprouting from where Linhardt thinks his head might be.

And today, Hypnos greets him the same as ever, too: “Hiya. How was your day?”

“It was alright,” Linhardt mutters. “Ferdinand tried getting me to train again, and it took me ten minutes before I finally got him to sleep. Either I’m not strong enough or he’s been getting better at resisting my powers.”

Hypnos seems amused, though how Linhardt can tell, he doesn’t know. He just does, somehow, and he’s learned not to question it. Anything is possible in a dream, after all. “Hey, hey, that’s cool. Who needs weapons when everyone can just…” The outline of him wavers slightly, and Linhardt imagines he must be making a careless gesture with his hand. “Y’know, send everyone to sleep, right? So much less trouble.”

“So much less blood,” Linhardt agrees.

He tells Hypnos about the rest of his day—practicing healing with Mercedes, watching Hubert and Lysithea spar with their magic together, flee from Edelgard trying to drag him into paying attention to another one of her discussions on strategic warfare. “Dorothea—from Cabin 10,” Linhardt adds, when Hypnos gives off a sort of confused aura, “tried to predict my love life today too. Like she hasn’t been consistently getting it wrong for the past three summers.”

“How does she get it wrong? She’s of Aphrodite, isn’t she?”

“Well…” Linhardt trails off. Is it normal to talk about your love life with your dad, especially when he happens to be a god? Linhardt’s never spoken to Father about this, that he knows for sure. Briefly Linhardt wonders if asking how he was born would be an effective distraction, but at the same time, that’s one piece of information he’d be happier not knowing. “She says it’s going to happen someday.”

Again with the confused aura. “What, you getting a love life? I mean, it’s gotta happen someday, won’t it? Unless you never like anybody. I guess that’s cool too.”

Linhardt shrugs. “It’s more like…” _The person I like won’t ever see me that way…_ “Well, it’s nothing.” The dream wavers as he says the words, the entire landscape wobbling a bit and the fog lifting and clearing. “Oh, someone’s trying to wake me up,” Linhardt muses. “I should go. Bye, um… Dad.”

He thinks Hypnos smiles at that, but he can never be sure when all Linhardt sees is the formless blob of wisp. As always, Hypnos says, “Okay, bye. Have a great day, kid. Goodnight.”

It’s always a little strange talking to Hypnos, especially now that Linhardt is more aware of who he is. When Linhardt was younger, Hypnos appeared in his dreams much more frequently, and he’d bring little Linhardt out to see the world—Linhardt remembers flying above the city scape of New York, swimming deep underwater in the Pacific, treading through dense forests alongside wild animals. He had always assumed they were simply dreams, not his first experiences of (assisted) astral projection.

Now that he’s in Camp Half-Blood and has his powers under some semblance of control, Hypnos only visits—if he could call it that—once a week, sometimes once every other week. He always asks about his day, any interesting happenings recently, so on and so forth. It’s… nice, Linhardt supposes, to have a father—no, a _dad—_ who actually cares about what he does. It had never been that way with Father, stern and strict and as different as he could be from someone as relaxed as Hypnos. It makes Linhardt wonder what the two ever saw in each other.

“—hardt! Hey, Linhardt, come on, wake up!”

“Urgh…” Linhardt reluctantly lifts his head off the dining table. His senses come back one at a time—first he feels the drool drying on his chin, then sees Caspar bouncing on his heels beside him, and finally registers the clamor ringing in his ears. Demigods are scrambling to and fro, grabbing friends and shouting over the noise. Linhardt clamps his hands over his ears with a scowl. “Why would you wake me up to _this?_ ”

Caspar just grins. There’s a cut above his left eyebrow and what looks like a bruise beginning to form on his cheek, and Linhardt sighs—he knew he shouldn’t have left Caspar alone in the training grounds with Felix earlier. “Come on! Didn’t you hear the part about the three-legged death race?”

“The three-legged—” Linhardt sits up. “I’m sorry. What?”

Seteth’s voice booms overhead: “Alright, everyone, _settle down,_ you may decide partners _later,_ preferably _after_ the rest of the announcements.” He glares out at the dining pavilion and only speaks again once everyone has hurried back to their own tables, including Caspar, who rushes back to the Ares table with a grin and a wave. Linhardt supposes that settles their partnership, even if he hadn’t exactly said anything.

“The three-legged death race will, as usual, take place in the Labyrinth,” Seteth continues. “This summer’s race was organized by not just the Hephaestus cabin, but also some of the Hermes children. Thank you,” he says, sounding the farthest thing from thankful, “to Ashe Ubert and Yuri Leclerc for their generous cooperation.”

Ashe smiles and bashfully ducks his head at the applause; his half-brother, Yuri, just smiles his trademark smirk that has Linhardt very sure whatever they had planned for the death race is not going to benefit anyone in the vicinity.

After Seteth goes through an extremely long list of past injuries suffered in the Labyrinth—which Linhardt decides to block out, if only because he still has nightmares about last summer when Sylvain had been cursed to only speak in limericks for a week and he had decided, of course, to use it to his terrible advantage—he finally concludes with, “The race will be tomorrow afternoon. Prepare accordingly. As always, I do not condone playing dirty, but as always, I find it difficult to enforce this rule anymore. I implore you all to stay alive. Thank you.”

If the words were meant to be reassuring, they definitely do not have the desired effect on Linhardt.

After dinner, Caspar bounces around Linhardt like a particularly excitable puppy with blue hair. “This is gonna be _so_ cool,” he declares, like he hadn’t just heard Seteth mention the part where Claude had been hit by some sleep-inducing mushrooms and Lorenz had sobbed uncontrollably the whole way back to camp because he thought the idiot was dead. “Lin, we totally gotta win this time! Last summer was a bust, wasn’t it?”

“I… guess,” Linhardt allows. It could have been better, he supposes, but at least he hadn’t been cursed to speak in limericks and Caspar hadn’t fallen victim to mushrooms. The worst they’d had to deal with was walking for an hour straight before realizing they’d been going in circles and had almost eaten the single golden apple they’d found out of hunger. “There isn’t even a prize, though, is there? What’s the point?”

Caspar throws his arms in the air. “Who cares? Isn’t just winning good enough?”

“Ugh, but then we’d have tired ourselves out for nothing.”

“Not _nothing._ We get _bragging rights._ ” Caspar says those words like they’re the best things since Celestial bronze weapons.

Linhardt sighs, but he can’t help but smile—Caspar’s grin tends to be awfully infectious. “Alright, alright. Now quit bouncing around like you’re on steroids and get some sleep if you want to win tomorrow.”

“So that means you’ll help me win, right—”

“ _Linhardt!_ ” one of his half-siblings calls from inside Cabin 15. Caspar winces while Linhardt sighs—only the both of them could make a child of Hypnos, perpetually sleepy and mild-mannered, actually raise their voice. “Will you get inside already! Or quiet down if you won’t!”

Linhardt mutters an affirmation before turning to Caspar. “Yes, I’ll help you win,” he grudgingly confirms. Caspar silently pumps a fist in the air. “But only if you go back to your cabin now.”

“Gotcha! Thanks a bunch, Lin! Uh… goodnight!”

And here it comes—that long, awkward moment where Linhardt doesn’t go in his cabin right away and Caspar doesn’t head to his own right away either. Instead they stand there, staring at each other, waiting for one to speak up or do something—and always, always, Linhardt crosses his fingers behind his back and hopes to the gods tonight is the night Caspar does it, whatever it may be.

But Caspar only does the same thing as every other night before—he clenches his fists at his sides, rubs the back of his neck with a sheepish laugh, repeats his _goodnight,_ then turns and dashes back to the Ares cabin at breakneck speed.

Not for the first time, Linhardt stares at his retreating back, half-heartedly kicks the grass beneath his feet, and trudges into his cabin.

Falling in love with Caspar was easy.

They met when they were both six years old, being family friends, and went on to study in the same school together where Caspar’s dad was the PE teacher Linhardt absolutely hated and where Linhardt’s father was the part-time infirmary doctor Caspar absolutely despised. Even then, Linhardt was a prime target for bullying—his hair was just the right length for older kids to pull at, and he was frail and weak enough to be pushed around. Being dyslexic and diagnosed with ADHD hardly made any of that any better; if anything, it just gave the bullies more ammunition.

The reason Caspar was always being sent to the infirmary was because he fought off anyone who was stupid enough to attack Linhardt when Caspar was around to see it. By the time his natural Ares strength started to show, he was the one who sent kids packing to the infirmary while he was dragged away to the principal’s office for lectures. With his dad being the PE teacher, they couldn’t exactly suspend him without also losing one of their employees, but his father was far from easy on his punishments either.

Linhardt supposes he can see what made Ares like Caspar’s other dad; they both have a penchant for violence and bloodshed, after all. It was hard enough seeing blood day in and day out while sitting in any of the numerous waiting rooms in Father’s hospital—seeing it splattered all over Caspar made Linhardt want to close his eyes and sleep forever, to sink into a dream where no one, especially Caspar, ever got hurt.

They received word of Camp Half-Blood from, not so surprisingly, one of Linhardt’s dreams with Hypnos—every night Hypnos told him a little more about himself, his godly heritage, and what it meant for him and Caspar alike. “Head on to Camp Half-Blood,” Hypnos had said, in that dreamy, sleepy voice of his that Linhardt heard so much of himself in. “I’m sorry I can’t help you more, kid. But I’ve had dreams, and they tell me you’ll make it, you and your friend.”

They were thirteen when they first made the trip—according to Google Maps, “Delphi Strawberry Service” is only a few bus stops and then an hour’s walk, and back then it didn’t seem so difficult. What Linhardt hadn’t expected—hadn’t known at all, really—was that using the Internet sent up a beacon for monsters, and it had taken the two of them far more than just a few bus stops and a little walk to arrive. To be specific, they’d taken one bus before a Colchis bull smashed it to bits and they had to jump out a window while the giant mechanical bull got its horns stuck in the bus.

It only got worse from there—a gryphon swooped down while they were trying to make a break for it across the street and the only reason it hadn’t snapped Caspar up in its gigantic beak was because Linhardt had panicked so terribly, the gryphon had fallen asleep in the middle of the road. But that had drained him of almost all his energy, and Caspar had been forced to carry him on his back while running the rest of the way to Camp Half-Blood.

“Stop,” Linhardt remembers mumbling. Caspar was running and running and he must have been hurting and Linhardt just wanted it all to stop. “Just go. I’ll catch up. I just need a nap…”

“I’m not leaving you!” Caspar snapped, loud enough that Linhardt feared some other monster would hear him. “I’ll never leave you, Lin, and that’s a promise! I’ll protect you forever!”

At the lovely age of thirteen years old, Linhardt could not have described the strange feeling that started in his stomach and rose all the way to his chest, where it seemed to tighten around his heart. At the much worse age of sixteen, Linhardt can say without doubt that he sometimes wishes Caspar had never said that, if only because that may have meant Linhardt would have fallen in love some other, less inconvenient time.

They were almost to the strawberry fields when the Colchis bull reappeared—it came charging from behind, and Caspar had just barely managed to get out of the way in time before it would have skewered the both of them on its horns. But he lost his grip on Linhardt, sending him tumbling over grass that had him sneezing for several days afterwards, until finally skidding to a stop at the base of a tree—several ways away from where the giant mechanical bull was now bearing down on Caspar, who looked smaller than ever against the 10-foot-tall monster.

“Caspar,” Linhardt had managed, but he was just so _tired._

Caspar picked up a pitifully-sized tree branch (though for him it was probably just the right length to swing around), then started jumping up and down and waving his arms like a drowning man. “Come get me, you big fat metal… guy!” he shouted, in typical Caspar fashion.

 _No, no, no—_ Linhardt knew Caspar was stronger than most, even before they’d found out about their godly heritages, but at the time, he barely cleared 5 feet in height, and the bull was breathing fire from its nostrils. “Caspar,” Linhardt said again, a little louder—“Caspar, _run!_ ”

But the bull was charging again, straight for Caspar—he waited until the last second before leaping to the side and swinging the tree branch. Linhardt scrabbled to his unsteady feet, just in time to watch the branch flicker and transform mid-swing into something long and black before his eyes—it smacked against the side of the bull’s head with enough force to rattle it and push it backwards, but far from enough to incapacitate it.

Linhardt felt himself grow dizzy just looking. Caspar was holding a belt—long and black and looking exactly the same as one of the belts his father wore sometimes.

There was no time—the bull was moving again, silver horns gleaming in the sunlight. Caspar dove to the side once again, but Linhardt knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. If Caspar tried to make a break for it to the strawberry fields, where Linhardt was around 70 percent sure would bring them to Camp Half-Blood, he wouldn’t be able to outrun the bull for more than a few seconds.

If Linhardt could just do something—if Caspar didn’t have to protect him, if he weren’t so _weak—_

It was only when the bull’s horns caught Caspar in the leg that Linhardt stopped thinking. It was the blood, he knows, now—it was the blood, that shade of red he hates so much, spilling out in a high arc in the air when the bull drew back, then thrust its horns into Caspar’s wound again. His blood flew high, high, then came splattering down onto the once-green grass. Linhardt’s ears rang with Caspar’s scream.

He wishes that he had fearlessly stepped in and saved Caspar, like Linhardt was paying him back for all the times Caspar had saved him. But when Linhardt had ran towards the bull and shouted, “ _Sleep,_ ” he hadn’t been thinking about any of that—he could only see the blood on the grass, the blood on Caspar’s skin, the blood on Linhardt’s hands.

The bull wavered, its legs buckling—Linhardt paled. He still wasn’t strong enough, even now. But it was enough of a distraction, and it would give them the headstart they needed—despite the pounding headache behind his eyes, he helped Caspar rise from the pool of his blood and dragged the both of them to the strawberry fields. There was no time to turn around and see if the bull was chasing after them—Linhardt couldn’t hear anything apart from the jackhammer beat of his heart and Caspar’s heavy breaths beside him, his whimpers of pain when his leg was jarred.

Everything after that is a blur in Linhardt’s memories. Linhardt hadn’t had enough air left in his lungs to explain who they were, but some campers near the entrance had helped them to what Linhardt now knows was the Apollo cabin for medical attention. “W… Wait,” he’d stammered, “where are you taking him? Bring him back—Caspar!”

Someone must have tried to reassure him that they were helping, but Linhardt couldn’t see or hear or think—it was just Caspar, Caspar, _Caspar._

And then, predictably enough, he’d fallen dead asleep.

“Linhardt? Are you awake?”

Linhardt blinks, slowly, his vision refocusing—Mercedes is sitting in front of him, her hands still faintly glowing with vitakinesis. “I—yes, sorry. Just… thinking. What did you say?”

Mercedes smiles patiently, and Linhardt feels the tiniest bit of guilt—he should be paying more attention, considering Mercedes could be back in the city studying for her college classes right now, but she’d taken the time to come back to her old summer camp to help teach the other kids. “I was just asking what made you want to study healing in the first place.”

“Oh.” Linhardt scratches his cheek. “Is it strange?”

“A bit,” Mercedes admits. At least she’s honest. “Most demigods would prefer to capitalize on their existing strengths, not seek other abilities that aren’t naturally available to them. And, well, forgive me, but children of Hypnos are not exactly known for wanting to learn much, you see. It doesn’t mean anything—I was just curious.”

Linhardt sighs. Mercedes had only found time out of her busy schedule to visit this summer, and therefore hadn’t been around in the past two—Linhardt had learned almost nothing useful from the Apollo kids, especially considering almost all of them excelled in the different skills Apollo specialized in like archery, music, and art rather than healing. Linhardt had forged through the past two years through sheer willpower alone, something he hadn’t even known he’d had until… until, well, Caspar.

“When Caspar and I first arrived here in camp, Caspar was badly hurt,” Linhardt explains, as succinctly as he can. He’d really rather not revisit those memories more than he needs to. “I couldn’t… can’t stop thinking that it was my fault. If I had just been able to do more, he wouldn’t have needed to be so injured. But I don’t think I’ll ever be good in a fight. I just… can’t. So learning how to heal seemed like the next best thing.”

“Oh,” Mercedes says, sounding pleasantly amused, “that does make sense.”

“It… does?”

Mercedes smiles. Even though she’s one of the oldest campers Linhardt knows, she still looks almost like she’s their age. Probably something to do with how she’s the daughter of Hebe, goddess of youth and healing. “It’s sweet you decided to change for him.”

Linhardt feels his face go hot. “I—I am not _changing,_ thank you. It’s… I’m… adding. Like… adding a new skill to my arsenal. My abilities don’t exactly have much variety, see. Besides, healing is a very convenient skill to have. So. There.”

Mercedes’ smile doesn’t falter. “If you say so,” she allows. “But I’ve heard you’re usually very unmotivated to put effort in things. So to learn something so difficult for your friend… you must really lo—”

Linhardt jumps to his feet, which is the most strenuous physical activity he’s done for the past week. “I should get going,” he says, somehow not stumbling over his words.

With no destination in mind, he wanders around camp for a while, noting down everyone’s different preparations for the three-legged race—Edelgard and Hubert are poring over some strategy maps together, even though Linhardt’s fairly sure maps aren’t going to help very much in the ever-changing Labyrinth. Lysithea is walking around and calling for Bernadetta, who had apparently fled her cabin just to hide somewhere else in camp. Even the Oracle, Byleth, is sitting by the sword fighting arena with Yuri, the both of them idly watching Sylvain and Felix spar.

Finally, Linhardt finds Caspar in, of all places, the archery range—plenty of demigods are training there in preparation for later, but Caspar is with Ashe at the far end of the range, where less campers are clustered. Linhardt approaches from behind, hoping to just stop at a safe distance and then call out Caspar’s name so he doesn’t have to walk any further, but feels his curiosity pique when he sees the serious expression on Caspar’s face.

“It happened again?” Ashe is saying, fixing his eye on the target ring several meters away. Linhardt squints—he’s standing even further away from it compared to the other demigods in the range, but when Ashe releases his arrow, he hits a perfect bull’s eye.

Caspar crosses his arms and huffs, dragging Linhardt’s attention back to… whatever their conversation is about. “Yeah, for like, the millionth time. I don’t get it! I want to do something, but I just…” He makes a vague gesture with his hand, expression turning from frustrated to helpless. “Freeze up.”

Linhardt stills.

“Why?” Ashe nocks another arrow, his gaze not moving from the target ring even as he speaks. “Are you scared?”

“Duh. What if, you know…” Caspar makes another vague gesture, though this time with far more urgency in the action. “I don’t wanna say it out loud! Some sneaky Aphrodite kid might hear, you know they’re like moths to a flame with this sort of stuff. Or, like, monsters to a demigod playing phone games. Same thing.”

Ashe’s arrow flies, and it splits the first one straight down in the center. He’s a child of Hermes—how does his archery outclass even some children of Apollo? “I say you just…”

Then he trails off, and whirls around to meet Linhardt’s eyes. To Ashe’s credit, his expression betrays nothing—he just beams and waves over at him. “Hey, Linhardt! What’re you just standing there for?”

Caspar visibly jolts in surprise, but doesn’t say anything incriminating—a shame, because Linhardt would have loved for some other clue as to what their conversation was about. He has his guesses, of course, but throughout the past sixteen years of his life, he’s learned that guesses, no matter how good, are hardly any help against the will of the gods. “You two seemed busy,” Linhardt remarks, but doesn’t bother elaborating. “Are you participating in the race as well, Ashe?”

Ashe shakes his head. “I helped design it, so I can’t this year. Don’t worry, Yuri can’t either, so last summer won’t have to repeat itself.”

“Ah, yes,” Linhardt dryly mutters, “last summer.”

Caspar smacks his back with his typical strength. Linhardt stumbles forward, but hardly even feels the pain by this point. “It wasn’t _that_ bad, Lin, come on! It was pretty fun, right? And the golden apple was tastier than I thought too. I mean, even when it was sitting in a pile of garbage…”

“Please, don’t remind me.” Linhardt watches as Ashe readies another arrow—his form looks as perfect as it can get. Not that Linhardt knows much, considering he’s never willingly participated in a single sport in his life, but Ashe certainly _looks_ perfect.

Linhardt subtly observes the flex of his developing arm muscles. Perfect in more ways than one, it seems.

“Hey,” Caspar pipes up, giving Linhardt a suspicious look, “did you prepare any for later? Like, maybe learn how to leave tracks so we won’t get lost like last time?”

“I practiced healing a little,” Linhardt says as vaguely as possible. He decides to leave out the part where he had left halfway in the middle of the session because he hadn’t wanted to hear Mercedes say the L-word. “So if we do get lost, at least we won’t be lost _and_ injured.”

“That’s… a relief,” Caspar says, clearly forcing the bit of enthusiasm in his last words. “Okay—hey, Ashe, don’t you have any tips for us? Or hints, or clues, or anything to help prepare?”

Caspar badgers Ashe all the way to the dining pavilion, at which point he gives up when they have to separate to their different tables. Linhardt eats lunch half-heartedly, trying not to get too much in his system lest he throw it all back up somewhere down in the Labyrinth later, and feels the dread in his stomach grow when Seteth blows the hunting horn to gather the campers to a meadow about a hundred yards from the Big House.

Linhardt supposes it could start worse. After binding his and Caspar’s ankles together, he surveys the rest of the pairs to see who might cause the most trouble for them: there’s Edelgard and Hubert, of course, who look ready to unleash a horde of terrible misfortunes upon anyone unlucky enough to come within fifty feet of them. Dorothea would normally pose a threat individually, but paired with Ferdinand, she seems much less dangerous purely because she’ll probably be too distracted telling him to quiet down. Claude and Hilda are indescribably terrifying together, Linhardt would really rather just vanquish the thought of them from his mind lest he catch some sort of disease.

When the ground opens up beneath his feet, he’s far more ready for it than he had been two summers ago—this unfortunately doesn’t mean he gets any good at landing, and Linhardt ends up flailing uselessly in the air and crashing atop Caspar. Altogether, not how he would have preferred being atop his childhood friend, but Linhardt sighs and savors the warmth while he can.

That is, of course, until Caspar unceremoniously shoves him onto cold, hard stone. Gently shoved, but he was still shoved. “Whoa! Lucky us—over there, Lin!”

Linhardt groans, lifting his face up off the ground long enough to see the glow of a golden apple some several feet away. “There’s almost certainly a trap nearby,” he grumbles, lying face-down again. “Let’s just lie here and wait for someone else to activate it for us…”

“Come on, where would the fun be in _that?_ ” Caspar lifts Linhardt off the ground— _how_ he does that while their legs are bound, Linhardt has no idea—and settles Linhardt on his feet with that ever-surprising consideration. Linhardt has known, for a long time, that Caspar is as caring and considerate as any son of Ares can be, and it used to boggle his mind when their teachers called little Caspar out for being a bully when he had been the one protecting Linhardt from the real monsters. Even now…

He sighs and shakes the thoughts away. Linhardt doesn’t know if it’s a Hypnos thing or a him thing, but it’s just too easy to lose himself in his own head, sometimes literally.

Linhardt grudgingly hobbles along the tunnel with Caspar, trying to keep up with Caspar’s energy-fueled pace, and they miraculously reach the apple without getting maimed or encountering some other unfortunate tragedy. Caspar plucks the apple off the floor, wiping some dirt off of it with his orange camp shirt, and lifts it up to squint at. “Yep, this looks like the real thing. Not one of Ignatz’s replicas.”

“You can tell now?” Linhardt asks. Last summer, Ignatz had brought along painting supplies and apples he’d swiped from the pantry to create replica golden apples. Caspar had almost gotten food poisoning after taking a bite out of one and declaring the apple tasted of paint, but that’s beside the point. Besides, Caspar has an iron stomach, so even without Dedue, a son of Demeter, to help extract the fruit out of him, Linhardt is around 40 percent sure he would have lived.

“Yeah! It doesn’t smell of paint.” Caspar sniffs the apple as if to make sure. Linhardt is less certain—Ignatz is a child of Apollo, and he specializes in art. Creating some sort of mixture that replaced the smell of paint with the fragrance of fresh apple doesn’t sound too far-fetched for him, especially considering he and Raphael, son of Hephaestus, have been tinkering around together too. “Or… should I take a bite out of it? You know, to make sure?”

Linhardt snatches the apple out of Caspar’s hand and stuffs it in his pocket. “No.”

“Lin! You’re no fair.”

“Tell me that again after getting food poisoning for the second summer in a row. Third,” Linhardt amends, suddenly remembering when he and Caspar had snuck out of camp one night because they missed McDonald’s food and Caspar had ended up choking on a pube hair in his burger. They haven’t returned to a McDonald’s since then. “Third summer in a row.”

“That burger doesn’t even _count_ as food poisoning,” Caspar protests as they start walking forward again. There aren’t any hints as to where to go next, and they’d both learned early on the Labyrinth wasn’t the sort of place to provide any, no matter how nicely they asked. “It was just, well… you know.”

Linhardt thinks about how to classify that incident for a moment. “Near-death by pube hair?”

Caspar shivers. “You ever think about _whose_ pube hair that was? ‘Cause I did for like, a week straight afterwards. It was all I could think about. Felix almost killed me while we were training ‘cause I saw another pube hair on the training arena floor and it was like revisiting my trauma.”

Linhardt’s not sure if that’s the right way to use that term, but he decides against correcting Caspar. It seems to fit the situation, anyway. “Wait, _why_ was there…?”

“Pube hair on the training arena floor?” Caspar finishes for him. “Maybe you should ask Sylvain. It was red.”

For a while, they stroll through the Labyrinth semi-peacefully—they only activate a _few_ traps, and most of them had been Linhardt’s fault this time around, if only because there are always Ancient Greek or Latin words engraved along the tunnel walls and Linhardt can’t resist the urge to go up and touch them or trace the words with his fingers. And then the ceiling will open up above them and shower them in blazing cannonballs, or the floor will give way and have them plummeting down into piles of garbage enchanted to go for their kneecaps, but that’s unimportant.

“For the _last time,_ Lin,” Caspar says, exasperated and pulling banana peels out of his hair, “do _not_ go around touching words on walls! Next time I bet it’s going to be a pit of pit scorpions. Or a garden with, like, man-eating vines. Or—” He shivers. “Pube hair hell.”

“Enough with the pube hair. Anyway,” Linhardt says airily, picking rotten fruit out of Caspar’s head, “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with touching words on walls sometimes. Look up ahead.”

“Eh?” Caspar dutifully looks up ahead, then beams. “Oh! Lin, you’re a… wait, this isn’t thanks to you. It’s just pure luck.”

They approach the light at the end of the tunnel, which sounds a lot more optimistic than it actually is, especially once they emerge out into… a parking lot.

“A parking lot,” Caspar declares. “Huh.”

“Could be worse,” Linhardt remarks. “Could’ve been a pit of pit scorpions.” When they turn around, though, the tunnel they’d just entered from has been replaced by solid wall, as if the Labyrinth is telling them it had gotten sick of their conversations and to find some other way out of here. “Well, since we’re here, why don’t we explore a little?”

Caspar’s nose scrunches up in that irritatingly adorable way Linhardt tries not to think about too much. “Explore?”

“Aren’t you curious about where we are? We rarely get to travel much, after all.”

“I guess,” Caspar allows, eyes beginning to sparkle with excitement. That was easy. “You’re right! But, uh, I didn’t bring any money. We won’t be able to buy anything cool.”

Linhardt pats his pockets. Apart from the golden apple, he withdraws a hairtie, a disgustingly stale half of a chocolate-chip cookie, a discolored spoon, and a pair of worms-on-strings. Buried under all that is a single crumpled twenty-dollar bill. “Maybe we can get _something,_ ” Linhardt says.

They find the entrance to a mall that Caspar punches open the lock of—Linhardt doesn’t question it—but they must have ended up on the other side of the world, because it’s dead dark and the mall is empty, the stores inside shuttered closed. Caspar pouts in disappointment, but Linhardt is more interested in how the place looks—he’s been to malls before, obviously, but never when they’re this dark and empty. It’s unnerving, but somehow… otherworldly as well, in a way.

Monsters, gods and goddesses, the whole lot of them can’t compare to a dark and empty mall in the dead of night. Their only light sources are some malfunctioning light fixtures flickering on and off and the occasional store with a neon sign. It’s deathly quiet, with only the humming of the lights as their auditory companions, along with the faint sound of what must be construction work elsewhere in the distance.

“Lin, are you _sure_ we should be walking around in here?” Caspar mutters, clinging to Linhardt’s arm in a way that Linhardt pretends doesn’t make his heart bounce around in his chest like a logo on a screensaver. “I mean, what if we get in trouble? You know how the police are!”

“I do know,” Linhardt says, only half-listening to Caspar. He can’t shake off how _other_ the atmosphere of the place is, and he wants to hold onto the feeling and bottle it up so he never forgets.

But he looks down at Caspar, clutching his wrist hard enough to bruise, and feels a stab of guilt. Linhardt clears his throat. “Alright, alright, I suppose we won’t be finding anything here. Let’s go. I’m…”

He knows what he wants to say, what he _needs_ to say—but the word gets stuck in his throat anyway, and Linhardt isn’t strong enough to cough it out without choking on it as well.

Caspar doesn’t seem to notice, too elated at the rest of Linhardt’s words. “Great! We should probably head back to the parking lot, right? It’s the Labyrinth, so it’s underground—”

His eyes widen. For once, Caspar doesn’t say anything—he pushes Linhardt to the side instead, bringing the both of them stumbling down on the tiles, just before a foul blob of water splashes onto the spot they’d just been standing on. Linhardt watches, shocked speechless, as the tile hisses and sizzles, leaving only a smoking black spot on the floor—when he lifts his gaze, it’s to find a trio of telekhines in the distance, advancing quickly and forming more poisonous water blobs in their hands.

The sound of construction in the distance—Linhardt curses himself over and over. Telekhines were smiths who invented the art of metalworking.

Caspar scrambles to his feet, pulling Linhardt up—the metal band chafes into the skin of his leg, but the pain helps bring Linhardt back to awareness. “Run!” he says, like Linhardt needs any more encouragement—they bolt down the nearest escalator, because telekhines have enough trouble waddling along on flat surfaces. But they skid to a stop at the bottom—more of the sea monsters are emerging from a store marked for construction, wielding various tools in their hands.

Linhardt glances over his shoulder—the telekhines are struggling to get down the steep escalator steps without toppling over. And the telekhines from the store are still a ways away. He surveys their immediate surroundings as fast as he can, then tugs on Caspar’s wrist. “This way!”

“ _Which_ way?” Caspar hisses, though he dutifully follows Linhardt anyway—not that he can do much else, considering their legs are still bound together. “Where can we even hide? No restrooms, these guys are sea demons, the last thing I want is to swallow toilet water—”

They nearly slam into a storefront, but Linhardt focuses, searching for that little bit of life in the metal—when he finds it snoozing, he grips tight and orders _Wake up,_ and the steel shutters screech as it pulls itself open. Caspar helps Linhardt wriggle under the tiny gap between the shutters and the floor, and Linhardt forces the gate to _sleep_ again just as the telekhines appear around the corner.

With an exhausted sigh, Linhardt leans back against the shutters—he’s gotten better at finding different uses for his powers over the years, but no matter how hard he trains, his stamina simply can’t keep up. One usage is bad enough—two or three and he’s out like a light.

Caspar slumps down next to him, scanning their surroundings. It’s almost completely dark, with only a faint light to see by. “Seriously,” Caspar says, “you couldn’t have gone somewhere cooler?”

“Forgive me if my choice of cover isn’t to your tastes,” Linhardt dryly responds. “I was in a bit of a hurry.” Though he has to admit, his twenty dollar bill probably wouldn’t have been of much use in this Forever 21, even if it were open. “Do you mind if I…” Linhardt yawns. “Take a nap here? Just a short one. I can’t keep my eyes open…”

Caspar frowns, but says, “Well, I guess. A _real_ short one, okay? Ten minutes, tops?”

“Stingy,” Linhardt mutters, but he supposes that’s as good as he’ll get. He closes his eyes, head lolling to the side, and lets the dreams take over.

With so much going on after they’d first arrived at camp, Linhardt and Caspar hadn’t been able to properly speak to one another until three days later.

Linhardt had been sitting in the middle of the strawberry fields, staring at nothing in particular; for once, he’d been too awake to nap, even if he hadn’t been doing anything. He was thinking, mostly, trying to sort all the new information in his head into easy-to-access files categorized by topic. It was a technique he’d developed early on, when school forced so many new lessons on him after he’d gotten used to picking through one topic at a time.

He heard Caspar’s footsteps from behind, recognized them, even, but couldn’t bring himself to turn around and face him just yet. Caspar didn’t say anything as he approached Linhardt, flopped down to sit next to him, and stare out at the fields as well—but after a few minutes Caspar began to fidget, so Linhardt took pity on him and said, “Hello.” He knew Caspar was the same as him, in a way—Linhardt was only capable of focusing on one thing and putting all his attention into it, while Caspar was hard-wired to focus on too many things at once.

“Hi,” Caspar greeted, grinning cheekily. “What’re you doing all alone out here? Isn’t it boring?”

“Sort of,” Linhardt admitted. “But I wanted to think. It’s too loud anywhere else in camp. And if I stay in my cabin, I’ll end up sleeping.” It was strange, the natural inclination and resistance to sleep for children of Hypnos—they could sleep anywhere and anytime they liked, in whatever position, but no one could _force_ them to sleep against their will. At least, that was what little Linhardt understood—the rest of his cabinmates, his half-siblings, weren’t particularly helpful in teaching him about himself.

“Oh, okay. Well… what’cha thinking about?”

“Us.” Linhardt looked back up at the sky. It was a beautiful day, clouds drifting lazily overhead, the sun peeking out from behind a particularly large one, while a cool breeze drifted through, ruffling Linhardt’s hair and the strawberry plants.

“Sounds interesting.” Caspar lay down on his stomach, thankfully not crushing any plants.

Linhardt turned to look at him. “Are you alright now?”

“Huh?”

“That monster, it… your leg…”

“Oh!” Caspar said again, perking up. “Yeah, I’m great! Here, look.” He sat up once more, rolling up the end of his pants and revealing his leg. The wound Linhardt could so vividly remember that it transferred from his memories to his nightmares looked like it had never been there in the first place. “They said I was lucky we got to camp when we did. Any longer and it would’ve scarred. Kind of a shame… a scar would’ve looked cool.”

“Cool?” Linhardt repeated, trying and failing to hide the tremble in his voice. “You were… There was so much blood. You were screaming. And I…”

Caspar frowned. “It wasn’t your f—”

“Of _course_ it was my fault.” Linhardt looked away. He didn’t think he could bear looking at that patch of skin for too long—it fooled him into thinking the wound had never been there, that Caspar had never gotten hurt, and if Linhardt _forgot_ about how badly Caspar had suffered because of him, he’d never forgive himself. “I couldn’t do anything. You had to protect me again.”

“You _did_ do something! You helped, too!” Caspar protested. Sparks of fire danced across his clenched fists, and Linhardt had to look away from those, too—he’d heard about how Caspar had inherited a weak degree of pyrokinesis from his godly father, but not the resistance to fire required to handle it, and he didn’t think he could bear even the slightest burn on Caspar’s knuckles. “You got that monster to stop for just long enough so we could escape, and you’re the one who helped me to camp!”

“But not before you got _hurt._ ” Linhardt’s voice cracked, threatening to spill into a sob, and that was the absolute last thing he needed right now. He’d cried enough the first few nights curled up in bed while Caspar was in the Apollo cabin for healing, and Linhardt doubted saltwater would be very good for the strawberry plants, besides. “If I’d been faster—”

“Lin.” Caspar gripped his wrist tight enough to hurt. The pain was sharp enough to cut through the haze of Linhardt’s spiraling thoughts. “You can’t change what already happened, okay? What matters is that you’re okay. And I’m okay, too. And we found this place. So it’s not like I got hurt for nothing. Stop beating yourself up over it.”

Linhardt inhaled, exhaled, folded his legs up to his chest and rested his forehead atop his knees. “You’re… right. For once,” he added, just to see Caspar laugh. The sound was light and happy and it lifted Linhardt’s chest up to spin it around, sort of like how Caspar lifted him up and spun him around when he was particularly happy, too.

“ _Besides,_ ” Caspar said, “I promised I’d protect you, didn’t I? I meant it. You’re stuck with me forever, so you should accept that now while you can.”

“I can think of worse things than that,” Linhardt hesitantly allowed. He still wasn’t so sure what the bubbly feeling in his chest was called, and for some reason he was in no hurry to find out. It was perhaps the first piece of information he’d been afraid to learn of.

Caspar nodded decidedly. “Now quit moping around in here! Did you know this place has a _lake?_ I bet we can go fishing. So even if all you wanna do is sit still and feel sorry for yourself, at least you can do that while _also_ fishing. Come on!”

Linhardt let Caspar pull him up, and they ran through the strawberry fields together.

“I think you could do worse, too, all guys considered,” a voice suddenly says. Linhardt blinks, the old memory fading, replaced by the all-too-familiar dream fog—Hypnos is back, drifting formlessly through the hazy clouds that were once the strawberry fields.

“Er. What? What are you doing—”

“That Aphrodite kid,” Hypnos interrupts, musing to himself, “her name’s Dorothy or some sort, right? I think you should listen to her, y’know. She sounds like she knows what she’s talking about.”

Linhardt scowls. “I am _trying_ to take a peaceful nap here.”

“No such thing as a peaceful nap for any relative of mine,” Hypnos says, which Linhardt had expected. “But, kid… I mean, Linhardt… I think you should go for it. Or… do whatever feels right. You know? Like, that thing that happens every night between you two, before you go to your cabins.”

“That—” Linhardt feels his cheeks flush. “How do you know about that?” He knows gods and goddesses are omniscient, but they usually decide what they want to see or hear. Hypnos had never so much as hinted that he knew anything outside of what Linhardt tells him in their dreams. If Hypnos knows about _those,_ then what else does he know about!?

Hypnos shrugs. Linhardt has no idea how he does that, considering he’s a formless wisp, but Linhardt has also long stopped caring about trivialities like those. “I know important stuff.”

“Those… moments… aren’t that important. I mean. For a god, that is.”

“Sure they are,” Hypnos says easily, and Linhardt decides against arguing further. “Well, I just wanted to check up on ya. How’s the race? Got any of those… uh… silver grapes, was it?”

“Golden apples,” Linhardt tells him. “And yes. One. Now we’re hiding out in a Forever 21, and I have no idea how we’re going to get out of here, especially with those telekhines probably still on the move.” So there are Ancient Greek monsters like the telekhines even all the way across the planet? Linhardt had sort of assumed different mythological monsters would be present here, like, say, a Chinese dragon or something. He doesn’t know. Ancient Greek mythology has been drilled into his head and taken up half his brain capacity.

Hypnos smiles lazily. “You’ll be fine. And I know that, not just ‘cause I’m a god, but also ‘cause I’m your dad. So don’t worry about it.”

Linhardt swallows. He knows how distant the other gods and goddesses are as parents, and it had always confused him because Hypnos seems more like a dad than his other father does. Even if Hypnos is rarely ever physically present, he _cares,_ and Linhardt isn’t used to it at all. “Thanks… Dad.”

“Lin, Lin, Lin, Lin, Lin…”

Linhardt stirs awake with a tired sigh. The first thing he notes is that he is definitely no longer slumped against the steel shutters, and the second thing he notes is that there’s some sort of fluffy jacket draped atop him. He sighs, nuzzling closer to the warmth by his side a little longer, then grudgingly opens his eyes. “What the… Where did you…”

“That bit of light from earlier came from this!” Caspar exclaims, holding up their second golden apple of the race. He’s much closer than Linhardt had thought—the warmth Linhardt had tried to bury himself in turns out to be Caspar’s shoulder. “It was actually in-between this mannequin’s boobs. It took me _forever_ to reach.”

“What did you do?” Linhardt looks around—with the golden apple nearer to him, it’s a little easier to see their surroundings. Fairly standard for any clothing store—racks of clothes, mannequins dolled up in featured outfits, a cashier at the far back. Judging by how he seems to have moved from the steel gates to somewhere closer to the middle of the store, he assumes Caspar had dragged him closer to get the apple.

Caspar shrugs sheepishly. “Might have stepped on you a little.”

That explains the mild ache in Linhardt’s back. “Well, whatever. At least we have it. I never imagined we’d find a golden apple in a Forever 21, but I suppose my imagination needs work all the same.”

They get up together, Linhardt stretching his arms over his head. That nap really had done wonders—he feels good as new and perfectly recharged, or at least as recharged as his perpetually-sleepy constitution is capable of. Perhaps it was because he’d spent most of the nap on Caspar’s shoulder, which is something he’ll have to bring up later, if only so he can have more excuses to sleep with him.

“How do we get out now, though?” Linhardt mutters. “If I open the gate, the noise will almost certainly attract the telekhines. And we don’t know how many of them there are, or where they might come from…”

Caspar’s eyes sparkle with what Linhardt instantly recognizes as a portent of ridiculous plans. “I’ve got an idea.”

Apparently one of Caspar’s old babysitters used to bring him to the store she worked in and let him explore all he liked, and Caspar ended up discovering a great many things in the stock room, like who the aforementioned babysitter was cheating on her boyfriend with during work hours. “And there was this exit that led to, like, a whole bunch of corridors that are built behind the shops,” Caspar explains as Linhardt forces the lock on the stock room door awake and open. “I never got far ‘cause it was too long and I knew I’d get lost. But I’m sure one leads to the exit or the parking lot!”

“Maybe we’ll find our third apple,” Linhardt wistfully murmurs, “and we can finally get out of this accursed race.” Though considering how far the Labyrinth had taken them, he wonders if they’ll even be able to get _out_ of it first.

Caspar’s right—after groping around half-blind in the cramped stock room for a few minutes, Linhardt eventually finds a door leading to the promised corridors. There are even less working lights here, with only the occasional fluorescent bulb providing a modicum of visibility, and Linhardt has to bring out the first golden apple in his pocket to see more than two steps in front of him. While the empty, deserted mall had been unsettling, these corridors are downright sinister, as if something worse than a telekhine could pop out from behind them at any given moment. Linhardt isn’t alone in glancing over his shoulder every few seconds—Caspar is too, and he keeps rubbing his palms against his jeans.

They pass by what feels like dozens of other different offices—security offices, equipment rooms, lunch rooms—before finally descending their second flight of stairs and arriving back to the parking lot without encountering a single telekhine along the way. Caspar heaves a heavy sigh of relief when the wide empty space appears before them once again, and Linhardt has to resist the urge to follow his example.

“Look.” Linhardt points at a dark entrance across the lot—it’s a far distance, but the parking lot seems relatively empty. “That must lead back to the Labyrinth. It’s got the same sort of energy to it.”

“I’ll take Hermes-brand traps over this creepy place,” Caspar says firmly. “Let’s go! I hope our next golden apple is somewhere brighter.”

They make it a grand total of five steps towards the entrance before a strange noise echoes throughout the lot—the sort of noise that does not signal good news. Caspar skids to a stop and Linhardt strains his ears for it again, but he doesn’t have to try hard to hear the next sound that follows: it’s the same noise again, but louder and closer. It sounds like something clicking together, or some sort of chittering…

Linhardt freezes. That isn’t an entrance to the Labyrinth, that’s—

“Run!” he shouts, just as huge dark shapes scuttle out of the entrance. Caspar yelps and does so, the metal band chafing at Linhardt’s skin once more as he follows Caspar’s blind lead down the parking lot. There isn’t much light aside from the glow of the golden apples, but Linhardt doesn’t need it to know what the monsters giving chase behind them are— _myrmekes,_ giant ant-like creatures that are honestly far more terrifying than telekhines can hope to be.

The parking lot is huge and empty, which means there are virtually no places to hide, and Linhardt can tell Caspar doesn’t want to go back in the mall and risk catching the attention of the telekhines. “We… We’re gonna have to… _gah,_ ” Caspar says, which is about the level of eloquence Linhardt usually expects from him. But Linhardt gets the point—he stops just as Caspar unsheathes his dagger from his belt. One touch and it morphs into a giant Celestial bronze axe. “Get back, Lin!”

“I can’t,” Linhardt points out.

Caspar groans. “You know what I mean!” Then he lifts his axe with a war cry and slices down the first myrmekes stupid enough to come charging. He splits it down its head, cutting its pained shriek halfway short, and the ant dissolves into golden dust.

For a moment, Linhardt lets himself feel relief—until he realizes there are _far_ more than just one ant coming for them.

“Caspar.” Linhardt swallows. “We have to run. There has to be another entrance to the Labyrinth somewhere here—”

“I can take ‘em,” Caspar says through gritted teeth. But Linhardt can tell he’s nervous too, with how hard he’s clutching onto the handle of his axe and how this close, Linhardt can hear the rapid thumping of his heartbeat, almost in sync with Linhardt’s own. “If we keep running, they’re gonna keep following. And that’ll give the others back in the nest time to join the chase, too.”

“But—” _You’ll get hurt,_ Linhardt can’t bring himself to say. “You can’t handle _all_ of those,” Linhardt says instead, gesturing at the swarm of myrmekes rapidly approaching. There’s still enough time to talk, but not for long. “I—I can barely do more than keep a few of them asleep at a time. We have to go.”

“Go _where?_ ” Caspar returns, and Linhardt has to admit he can’t answer that. “See? This place is huge, Lin, it’s impossible to search the whole place, especially when we’re like this!” He tugs at the band around their legs for emphasis, and Linhardt winces at the brief flash of pain.

“What if…” Linhardt worries on his lower lip. The myrmekes are only getting closer, and Caspar is readying himself for another swing of his axe.

Caspar blinks back up at him, confused. “What if what?”

Linhardt’s only done _this_ a few times before, and all those times had left him completely drained of energy and requiring twenty straight hours of sleep to recharge afterwards… but he can’t stomach the thought of forcing Caspar to take on an entire nest of myrmekes because Linhardt himself is useless in a fight that requires too much energy. With a deep breath, he steels himself and reaches for that power dozing deep inside him, and only gets enough time to tell Caspar, “Don’t panic,” before the metal band falls away from his ankle.

He remembers how the first time he’d accidentally done this had gone—Linhardt had gone on a quest with Caspar and Ashe, and they’d gotten separated while running from carnivorous sheep that were resistant to his commands to sleep. In an exhausted panic, he’d desperately wished to become small enough to ignore, and then it had happened—he squeezed his eyes shut as a human, and opened them as a bird.

It was one of Hypnos’ abilities, shapeshifting, though he had only ever been reported to take on the form of a small bird. Linhardt’s half-siblings informed him he was a nightingale, its dark green plumage matching his hair, and then they all promptly went back to sleep, apparently unbothered by the fact that they could turn into _birds._ Not very threatening ones, but birds all the same. Linhardt had practiced it in secret, getting good enough that he could just turn into his nightingale self every time a teacher went looking for him while he cut class, but he’d never had to break it out for anything more serious than that.

Until now, obviously.

Caspar gawks dumbly for a moment before the myrmekes chitter, mandibles clicking together, and draw his attention back to the fight. No longer hindered by the metal band, Caspar is a whirl among the swarm of monster ants, slicing and chopping with strength and agility Linhardt has always both feared and admired.

But there’s no time for any admiring now—Linhardt flits across the parking lot, scanning for any possible entrances that might lead to the Labyrinth. Being so much smaller than usual means his brain must shrink too, because his thoughts are even faster and more short-lived than usual, and he can’t seem to stop thinking about those worms-on-strings he had pulled out of his pockets earlier. Somehow he catches sight of another entrance, though, this one decidedly Labyrinth-like—Linhardt comes as close to it as he dares, and manages to pick out the familiar twisting corridors.

A pained shout cuts through the lot— _Caspar’s_ shout.

Linhardt zips back to the myrmekes, fast enough that his tiny bird brain jiggles in his skull like a water balloon, and almost reverts back into his human self right then and there when he sees the wound on Caspar’s arm—two pinpricks bleeding red, definitely the work of myrmekes’ mandibles. It isn’t deep, but more and more of the giant ants are clustering around him, and Caspar can’t hold out that long against so many—

Linhardt drops to the ground, shifting back into his human self just before hitting the floor. “ _Sleep,_ ” he shouts, hard enough that the nearest myrmekes drop to the ground. He wobbles unsteadily, already feeling the drowsiness threatening to take over, but he catches sight of one more ant quickly approaching Caspar from behind. It rears back on its hind legs, mandibles opening—

And it feels like being thirteen years old again, seeing the Colchis bull charge Caspar and Linhardt standing at the side, too far to do anything, too slow and weak and useless—

He doesn’t think when he dives in between the myrmekes and Caspar’s back, right before the monster sprays its poison. Right away, Linhardt knows this is far too painful to survive—it burns and burns and _burns,_ seeping into his skin and rendering him incapable of coherent thought. It feels like how Linhardt imagines dying must be, and he scrabbles for something to hold onto, something to focus on before he passes—maybe he’ll be lucky and become a ghost, and then he can stick by Caspar’s side even beyond death, because dying now before he’s even said what he wants to say aloud is too painful to bear.

Caspar falls to his knees beside him, shouting something Linhardt can’t hear—Linhardt fumbles with his numb hands and manages to grip Caspar’s wrist, just enough to steady him, distract him from the pain, remind himself why he’s here and why he’s dying from poison. He protected Caspar—he repaid his debt…

Something hot slides down his cheek and instantly melts—a tear, Linhardt realizes, that evaporates from the heat now beginning to radiate from Caspar’s body.

For a moment, Linhardt wonders if he’s finally set himself on fire like everyone was expecting—but when Linhardt’s wavering vision manages to steady for a second, he realizes it’s some kind of aura instead, and a term from one of Seteth’s lectures flashes in his head: _Ares’ Blessing._

 _Caspar,_ he tries to say, but he doesn’t know if he even opens his mouth. Caspar is already up on his feet, expression furious as he grips his axe with strength Linhardt’s never seen before—he roars as he throws himself into the rest of the myrmekes still nearby, and Linhardt can’t follow his movements after that, because he’s a glowing red whirl of singing steel and golden dust.

Linhardt blinks some four or five times, vision glowing blurrier by the second, and when he opens his eyes after the sixth time it’s to look up into Caspar’s worried face. _Lin,_ his mouth forms, familiar enough that Linhardt can almost hear his voice. “Lin!”

“I’m going,” Linhardt mumbles, “to take a nap.”

“What!” Caspar shouts, so loudly Linhardt groans in frustration. “No! No, for once in your life, Lin, do _not_ go to sleep!”

Linhardt tries to bat him away like an irritating fly, but he only manages to say, “Cas, I’m the child of the god of _sleep,_ ” and then his eyes slide shut before he can get anything else out.

For once, he doesn’t dream.

Linhardt wakes up with the vague taste of his and Caspar’s favorite sweet buns on his tongue. For a brief, delirious second, he wonders if he’s finally died and gone to heaven, but then he realizes a demigod like him would be heading to the Underworld no matter what and judged for his sins, so that particular wish is short-lived.

Then he takes a deep breath, filling his lungs up as best as he can, and deduces that dead people can’t fill their lungs up. He sits up slowly and blinks, trying to accommodate his eyes to the bright light, unused to it after so much darkness…

Wait a minute. Bright… light?

“Lin!” Caspar’s unmistakable voice hisses. Linhardt cracks his eyes open, blinking the stars out of his vision just in time to see Caspar hurrying over from… behind an aisle? “You’re awake! Thank the gods, I thought this was one nap I wouldn’t be able to wake you up from!” He’s blubbering so uncharacteristically that Linhardt is too surprised to fight back when Caspar wraps his arms around him in a crushing hug that squeezes the fresh air out of Linhardt’s lungs.

Linhardt supposes he doesn’t really mind. He returns the hug lightly at first, then tightens his grip on Caspar’s shoulders when he realizes how close to death he had come. “What happened? I remember falling asleep,” he says, “and… well, that’s it. The norm, really.”

Caspar draws back, scrubbing furiously at his reddening eyes. “I got really mad and got rid of the monsters.”

“That’s… succinct,” Linhardt tells him. Does Caspar not realize he’d been bestowed the Blessing of Ares, something so few of his half-siblings have ever received?

“Whatever,” Caspar says, which is how Linhardt knows he’s serious—Caspar, while not arrogant, never passes up an opportunity to brag about anything even remotely related to his combat prowess. “Anyway, I found the entrance to the labyrinth and hid there before any more of the stupid ants could come after us. Lucky I had some ambrosia on hand, but even without that, you were healing fine.”

The ambrosia… that explains why Linhardt still can’t get the taste of sweet buns out of his mouth. He’s starting to crave it, actually, which is just unfair. “I was?”

“You said something about being the child of Hypnos, like I don’t know that,” Caspar mumbles, pouting slightly in that annoyingly cute way of his. “Did you dream of him again?”

Linhardt shakes his head. “No, I just… well, I figured sleep is the answer to everything when your dad literally governs the sleeping world. So… I took a nap. Seems to have worked out fine, don’t you think?”

“ _Worked out fine?_ ” Caspar exclaims. “Lin, you—you almost _died!_ ”

“But I didn’t.”

“You. Almost. _Died._ ”

Linhardt wants to repeat himself, but the words get stuck in his throat—it takes him a moment to realize what’s stopping him is a sense of overwhelming relief that he’d lived, that he’s still here, that he can still see and hear and touch Caspar with this body. He takes in a deep, shaking breath, and murmurs, “I… suppose I did.”

Caspar doesn’t say anything right away, and Linhardt leans his forehead against Caspar’s shoulder. He’s warm and reassuring under him, and Linhardt savors the feeling while he can. “I wanted to protect you,” Linhardt says, under his breath. “Just once, I wanted to be the one doing the protecting.”

“Linhardt,” Caspar says, sounding lost, but he doesn’t follow that up with anything else.

“You’re always the one getting hurt for me.” Linhardt inhales, tastes fresh oxygen on his tongue and wonders why he had never appreciated how good it felt to just _breathe._ “Don’t you ever think about how that makes me feel, too? I don’t want to lose you, Caspar.”

“But—I don’t want to lose _you,_ either,” Caspar returns. “And I don’t just mean by dying—I don’t want you to ever get blood on your hands. I know you don’t like fighting and violence and stuff. So I… I don’t ever want you to have to get used to it. Fighting. Violence. Stuff.” He shrugs, somehow not jostling Linhardt resting against him. “I don’t want to lose what makes you _you._ You… know what I mean?”

Linhardt pulls back, staring at him. “I never knew.”

“What?”

“I never knew,” Linhardt repeats, voice trembling dangerously. “Caspar, I—why would you even care about any of that?”

“Well, duh, of course I would!” Caspar says, cheeks turning a blotchy red. “‘Cause, ‘cause, y’know, you’re… you’re Lin. You’re Linhardt. And I… made a promise. That I’d never leave you, and that I’d always protect you.” His face is almost entirely flushed by now, probably because the words he’d declared so boldly at thirteen years old are far too embarrassing to repeat now.

Linhardt shifts forward. “Caspar.”

Caspar startles. “Y—Yeah? What?”

“I have something to tell you.” Linhardt would have rather preferred to get this off his chest literally anywhere else aside from what looks like a 7 Eleven convenience store, but he had almost died earlier and he can’t guarantee he’ll survive another near-death experience to make it somewhere more romantic in time.

Caspar inches slightly backwards. “Uh… okay. Well, come out and say it, then.”

Does nothing ever pierce this ridiculous man’s barrier of obliviousness? Linhardt takes another deep breath, hoping Hypnos is watching this important moment right now, and declares for all the convenience store to hear, “I love you.”

Linhardt would like to say he got those three sickening words out in one fell swoop, but he actually stumbled over the _love_ and his voice cracked embarrassingly, so it came out more like, “I l-love you,” and then he muttered, “Shit,” at the end, just to wrap it all up.

Caspar blinks, very slowly. And then, “What?”

“I am not repeating that,” Linhardt tells him, aghast. The very thought of repeating that insanely humiliating moment of his life is too cruel to bear.

“Wait,” Caspar says, then sits back. If Linhardt listens, he can probably hear the sound of gears grinding in Caspar’s head. Then, after several long seconds of silence wherein Caspar’s face goes through a variety of expressions Linhardt doesn’t want to interpret, he finally says, “Can you… say that again? _Please?_ ”

Linhardt massages his forehead. “I am not—”

“I love you too,” Caspar blurts out, too fast for Linhardt to process at once. “So please please _please_ can you say it again, _please._ ”

“You what?” Linhardt says instead, thoughts running a mile a minute.

“Say it again first,” Caspar insists.

Linhardt struggles to get his head in order, then finally mumbles out another harried, “I love you.” He means it, of course, has meant the words for as long as he can remember, but it isn’t as if they’re any easier to get out. “Okay. Alright. You… Your turn.”

It feels silly to be taking turns saying the same thing like two children, but Caspar grins like he’s just been offered an entire cake. “I love you!” he half-shouts, surging forward and engulfing Linhardt in yet another rib-crushing hug that Linhardt _supposes_ he also doesn’t mind as much as he pretends to. “Hey, you’re serious, right?” Caspar asks, pulling back to grip Linhardt by the shoulders. “You’re not kidding around, are you? Y-You better not.” Whatever threatening tone he might have tried to take fails as soon as his voice trembles.

“Of course I’m serious,” Linhardt says. After so long, _not_ loving Caspar sounds like a distant, faraway tragedy he can only feel sorry for the victims of. “I do love you,” he says again, each repetition helping the words come easier, “and… you’re sure _you’re_ the one who likes me back? I never even… I mean, I thought…”

“You thought I wouldn’t _like you back?_ ” Caspar says, like he can’t think of anything worse. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more obvious about a crush in my _life._ ”

“You had crushes?” Linhardt decides to ask, if only to distract himself from the rapid beat of his heart like moon rabbits are pounding it to make rice cakes.

Caspar reddens. “Okay, maybe, like, one in third grade. The, uh… the teacher…”

“The _teacher?_ ”

“I mean, it doesn’t matter anymore!” Caspar declares, shaking Linhardt’s shoulders back and forth until Linhardt is seeing stars again. “What matters is that I like you _now,_ and I will forever! That’s a promise!”

Linhardt swallows, reaching up to grip Caspar’s wrist to steady himself. “You promise,” he murmurs. “You know how easy it is to break a promi—”

“Fine!” Caspar nods importantly. “I swear on the River Styx.”

Outside, thunder rumbles, the glass walls of the 7 Eleven vibrating in response. From the cashier, Linhardt spots the dozing employee wake with a start, and Linhardt barely even thinks about it before flicking his wrist in the mortal’s general direction. They fall face-first onto the counter once again.

“I cannot believe you just did that,” Linhardt sighs, despite how warmth is spreading from his heart to the rest of his body. “You realize how easy it is to fall out of love with someone? The gods are testament to that.”

Caspar stares down at him. “You have that little faith in me, Lin?”

“It—It’s not like that, I just—”

“I never specified what kinda love, y’know,” Caspar tells him. Linhardt is made suddenly aware of how close they are, with Caspar kneeling between his legs and still holding onto his shoulders. “Could be romantic or friendly. Could be anything as long as I can say _I love you_ and mean it.” He grins. “I love you.”

Linhardt’s entire face feels ready to melt off his skull. “That… You… Ugh. Fine. I love you too. Now can we please… I mean, is it alright if…” He trails off, because there’s simply no good way to ask for a kiss without wanting to die of embarrassment.

Caspar, bless him, apparently has zero misgivings. His hand moves from Linhardt’s shoulder to cup the side of his face, thumb swiping over a spot on his cheek, and Linhardt can’t resist leaning into his touch. Caspar’s hands are rough and calloused from handling weapons, but Linhardt can’t think of anyone with a gentler touch.

“Lin,” Caspar finally says, voice low, “can I… kiss you?”

Linhardt reaches up to fist his hand in Caspar’s shirt. “Please.”

All in all, Linhardt supposes their first kiss could have taken place somewhere worse. (That seems to be a decent summary of Linhardt’s life right now, that things could certainly have been worse.) In fact, in his dreams, he often invited Caspar for a night out by the beach in Camp Half-Blood, kicking the sand together or watching the moonlight sparkle off the ocean waves. Then Linhardt would confess there, Caspar would scoop him up in his arms, and then they’d share a majestic first kiss that would leave the audience in movie cinemas bawling their eyes out.

As it is, their first kiss takes place in a 7 Eleven halfway across the world, sitting on the dirty tiled floor, Linhardt leaning against a shelf of Kit-Kat bars and Pocky boxes while Caspar’s features are illuminated not by the moonlight but by the glow of the display coolers behind him. It is probably one of the most _un_ romantic places Linhardt could have thought of, and that’s taking into consideration he had just been in a parking lot infested with monster ants.

But he smiles into the kiss anyway, even as they bump noses and teeth, because really, Linhardt thinks it doesn’t get better than this.

Caspar explains that he’d trudged through the Labyrinth and gone out the first exit he found, which turned out to be into an alleyway that was just far enough belowground that it counts as ‘subterranean,’ and he’d followed the path upwards to the back entrance of the convenience store, where the only employee had thankfully already been sleeping. Linhardt wakes the cashier up with another careless gesture of his fingers and hands over his worn twenty-dollar bill as Caspar slides a multitude of snacks across the counter.

Linhardt can’t tell if they’re actually still halfway across the world, but it’s certainly growing light out when they exit the 7 Eleven—people are beginning to walk the streets, and other storefronts are lighting up, employees pulling up the steel shutters. “It’s down here,” Caspar says, tugging Linhardt’s wrist down a nearby alleyway before he pauses, then slides his hand downwards so their fingers interlace.

“You…” Linhardt stops, deciding it’s pointless to speak any further. He bends down and presses another kiss to Caspar’s cheek instead, if only because he can actually do that now instead of just dreaming about it for days on end.

“Hold on,” Linhardt says, when Caspar looks too dazed to respond right away. “Look over there.”

The metal band around Caspar’s ankle had snapped back around Linhardt’s as soon as they walked too close to each other, but they’ve pretty much perfected the art of three-legged walking by now—they approach the fruit vendor’s cart as innocently as possible, and Linhardt snatches the golden apple sitting atop a pile of other normal red apples before they make a run for it down the alleyway. Linhardt hopes the Labyrinth entrance closes up as soon as they make it in—he wouldn’t wish for the fruit vendor yelling obscenities behind them to get swallowed up in it.

“That’s three!” Caspar beams, holding the three golden apples up—Linhardt’s just glad he hadn’t lost the other two while Linhardt had been asleep. “Man, can we go now? I really want to eat these, _and_ the snacks we bought.”

As if on cue, the Labyrinth ceiling lowers to form a ramp, and the metal band finally releases them from its clutches. Caspar practically drags Linhardt up, because he’s so exhausted from everything that’s happened that he’s very sure one of those twenty-hour naps is in order, but he twitches awake when he hears the chatter of the campers. “Hey!” Caspar yells. “We’re back, guys!”

“Thank the gods,” Seteth sighs, patting the both of them down for injuries, but Linhardt had spent a few minutes doing his best to heal the wound on Caspar’s arm earlier. “You two took _ages._ Where in Olympus did you end up in?”

“Well…” Linhardt frowns. The mall hadn’t provided any defining features, and 7 Elevens are pretty universal. “It was sunrise, wherever it was.” He looks up, unsurprised to see the complete opposite happening at the moment, the sun sinking sleepily down the horizon. Linhardt has never so wished to be a sun in his life if it meant getting some sleep right this instant.

“ _Sunrise?_ ” Seteth repeats, but Caspar is running towards the rest of the campers, and it’s second nature for Linhardt to follow him now.

“Oh, this is all your fault,” Edelgard grouses. “If you had just surrendered when I challenged you—”

“A true fighter never _surrenders,_ ” Dimitri huffs, crossing his arms. “Besides, I won that spar. Did I not, Dedue?”

Dedue remains silent by the son of Nemesis’ side, which Linhardt figures is a wise choice.

“Looks like Bernie and Lysithea won,” Caspar says, pointing at the duo sitting on the grass nearby and idly sharing snacks from a plastic bag that looks suspiciously similar to the one Linhardt’s holding. “They look like real good friends now! See, the three-legged death race is a _bonding experience._ ”

Linhardt tilts his head. Bernadetta hands over a cookie to Lysithea, who in turn shares her soda can. “Real good friends. Yes, I’m… sure of that.” He wonders how exactly they had gotten here before everyone else, considering their conflicting personalities. Did Bernadetta run incredibly fast while Lysithea plucked golden apples off the floor?

“Wait.” Caspar scowls. “This means… Hey! Lin, we came in _last!_ ”

“Yes, I see that.”

“But—But—” Caspar groans, pulling at his hair. “Ugh! We’ll win next summer for sure!”

The thought of doing _another_ of these races has Linhardt’s stomach churning threateningly. “Perhaps I should skip next summer,” he mumbles to himself. “Or just turn into a small bird and fly very, very far away…”

Dinner is a raucous affair—Seteth lets them all sit at whichever table they like regardless of cabin, and the stories are exchanged so quickly that Linhardt hears all about them against his will. Apparently, Edelgard and Dimitri (along with their partners Hubert and Dedue) had bumped into each other somewhere down in the Labyrinth, a golden apple between them, and the two step-siblings had nearly dueled to the death for it before Lorenz snatched it up while on the back of Marianne’s pegasus, Dorte. The mental image is a sight to behold, certainly.

Afterwards, Caspar regales him with more tales he hadn’t heard, like how Hilda, one of his half-siblings, had used her odikinesis to turn poor Ferdinand and Dorothea against each other after they’d _just_ been able to settle on a temporary compromise to work together for the race, and Claude grabbed the golden apple under their noses. And of course, even those above ground had plenty to do—Ashe sneakily reported about how Yuri and Byleth headed off to the empty Hermes cabin and didn’t come out until the race ended. Linhardt supposes it must be nice to be adults.

“And, get this!” Caspar pumps his sparking fist in the air. “The thing I did a while ago with all those myrmekes? Balthus told me that was Ares’ Blessing! Like, my _dad’s_ blessing! I always thought he didn’t really care about me, just like… my other dad,” he says, a self-deprecating laugh escaping from his mouth, “but I guess he does care! He just doesn’t really show it, huh?”

Linhardt hums. “Yes, maybe.” He still remembers what he’d seen that day—one of Caspar’s abilities is to transform any weapon he has on hand into other weapons he’s seen before, and the tree branch he’d lifted against the Colchis bull those three years ago had morphed into his mortal father’s belt. In his eyes, it had been the deadliest weapon he could think of.

They stop just outside Linhardt’s cabin again, Caspar chattering on about other things related to Ares’ Blessing, until he realizes where they are. “Tomorrow we’ll probably get back to training and stuff,” Caspar says, bouncing on his heels. “Will you turn into a bird again? I never knew you could do that!”

“I, well… I try not to get into situations that require it,” Linhardt mumbles, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “But if you want, sure. Just be prepared for me to take a spontaneous twenty-hour nap. On that note,” he remembers to add, “I woke up feeling rather refreshed when I slept on your shoulder. Do you mind doing that again with me?”

Caspar pinkens. “W-What? Let you… sleep on me? I mean, I guess, sure. You already do that all the time, Lin, no need to ask.”

“I suppose,” Linhardt allows. “Well then, it’s getting late. I’ll turn into a bird for you all you like tomorrow, but let me get that sleep now.”

“Okay! Goodnight!”

But again, that moment comes around—those awkward few seconds where neither of them want to leave just yet, waiting for the other to make a move. Caspar squirms, fidgets, and worries on his lower lip while Linhardt pretends his fingers aren’t beginning to cramp from how hard he’s crossing them behind his back.

“You know what,” Linhardt says, at the same time Caspar nearly shouts, “L-Lin, we should—”

Yet another few seconds of silence. Caspar’s the first to laugh, and Linhardt thinks his favorite color is now the shade of red Caspar blushes when he’s embarrassed. “You first.”

“I was going to suggest we eat these.” Linhardt holds up the plastic bag of 7 Eleven goodies.

“Great, ‘cause _I_ was going to suggest we go to the beach,” Caspar declares. He reaches out and takes Linhardt’s hand in his again, the slightest bit of shyness in his warm, gentle touch. “You can sleep in tomorrow, right?”

Linhardt squeezes his hand. “Yeah, sure.” He bends down to make it easier for Caspar to kiss him, and can’t imagine a time where he hadn’t been in love with his best friend.

**Author's Note:**

> edit: [art by kasey!!!](https://twitter.com/caspheart/status/1279960866373472258) TYSM!!!
> 
> thank you for reading (❁´◡`❁) if you liked this, check out [this tweet](https://twitter.com/featherxs/status/1239788477807349760)!
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/featherxs)   
>  [tumblr](http://featherxs.tumblr.com/)


End file.
